Naming Conventions
2008-08-17A while back Bravado posted about his naming schemes for his computers and drives after a conversation we had regarding organization of our various devices on our networks.
I know you've all been on the edge of your seats refreshing your browser windows hitting up my blog for my naming conventions, so I've finally got around to appeasing your indescribable interest.
So here's the list of all my machines/devices and the names that I've assigned to them with my best attempts at explaining the reasoning behind each of them.
Mac Pro (Lain)
My Mac Pro is really the powerhouse of the home network. It has all of the horse-power in terms of processing power and RAM as well as the immense storage capacity. So obviously the name for this machine really needed a lot of thought put into it.
The name is taken from the main character of the cult anime series "Serial Experiments: Lain." The producers of this series are huge Apple fans and they incorporate their Mac love in extremely subtle ways throughout the series. For example, the OS that Lain uses is the "Copland OS" which was the codename for Apple's current foundation of Mac OS X.
I won't reveal any more reasons for the name as I would strongly recommend seeing the series for yourself.
Shuttle (Haruhi)
This is my newest computer and I use it to run both Ubuntu and Vista though it is primarily used for the latter to feed my reclaimed gaming addiction with TF2. This name is also based on an anime character from the series "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya."
The reason behind this name is a bit more obscure, but seeing as how this is my gaming machine, I decided to relate it to a really energetic and fun character. It is also comical to note that Haruhi is occasionally responsible for mossive disturbances in the space/time continuum. Sort of how like Windows is a symbol of instability, Haruhi is as well.
Eee PC (Raimi)
My main Linux Ubuntu box is so extremely hacked out and commonly associated with hacking activities. It is for this reason I related it to the character, Raimi from "Broken Saints."
Raimi is a true Linux cowboy. He programs for a living and spends most of his spare time hacking through vulnerabilities. I couldn't think of a better name for my Linux machine.
iPhone (Surrie)
This is more of a recent name change. Before being named "Surrie," the iPhone was self-titled. I'm nearly finished reading "The Surrogates" where society only experiences the real world through artificial androids.
This name is a bit of a stretch, but I figured I'd call my iPhone "Surrie" as that is what the androids are referred to informally and when I'm out and about outside the condo, I clutch to the iPhone as my only outlet back into the web.
Airport Extreme (Itsumo)
My Airport Extreme router was named during my phase where I was attempting to learn as much as I could about the Japanese language. So when it came time to assign a name to a router that would always be on I chose the title "Itsumo" which translates to "always."
ZFS Pool (Xanadu)
Now we're on to the secondary storage devices. The ZFS Pool resides within my Mac Pro and is comprised of two 500GB drives amounting to a RAID 0 configuration of 1TB. This means I have a huge storage capacity and it's accessible at very fast speeds as the data is read by both drives at once.
"Project Xanadu" was a reference also made in the Lain series and is an early prototype to what the internet is now. The idea was the name of this drive would allude to it's accessibility over the network to my other machines as well as the vast amounts of data that it held.
External Drive (Memex)
This external drive is only used for Time Machine backups right now. So it only connects to the Mac Pro as well. Like everything else on the Mac Pro, it's name also has roots in the Lain series (even if it was a mere reference to a real world project).
The name "Memex" means memory extender and as that is the sole function of an external drive, this was an obvious choice.
It's worth noting that all primary drives inside each machine adopt the name of the computer itself to minimize confusion as to what I'm connected through the network.
Sub-Cloud
My home network is largely based on cloud computing. My Mac Pro typically hosts all subsequent media that is OS independent and shares it to the other machines. This saves a lot of hassle with redundant files and saves a considerably amount of drive space when I want to have access to my 70+GB music library on the 4GB storage capacity of the Eee.
All of my music, movies, photos and even e-books are shared from the Mac Pro and made available to the rest of the network. This makes the Eee PC even more valuable when I know it has a virtual drive space of 1TB.
Future Expansions
In the future, I can't imagine buying any new computers at the moment. And any storage will likely just end up being pooled with the current ZFS volume for data redundancy security as well as maintaining the cloud computing foundation I have set up.
I suppose I could start naming my computer monitors in the future. I hope one day to have a set-up like Steve Gibson who sits in front of a wall of 5 monitors which I assume are connected to various machines. Though I think those dreams are a little ways away. At least a year from now anyways.